Influencer son of evangelical pastors shares how he embraced the Catholic faith

Jonatan Medina Espinal is a young Catholic influencer who, being the son of evangelical pastors, never thought about embracing the Catholic faith, something he did five years ago after a long and intense spiritual journey.

Now, with clearer ideas about the faith, this young Peruvian has become a defender of Catholic doctrine and a promoter of it on his social networks, while promoting his book Towards the Boat of Peter: My Journey from Protestantism to the Catholic Church.

For Dante A. Urbina, a Catholic author, teacher and lecturer who also influenced Medina’s conversion process, the book is “a testimony of profound conversion and intellectual depth that invites us to enter and persevere in the Catholic Church.”

Jonatan is an audiovisual communicator by profession and defines himself as “a seeker of truth.” In an interview with EWTN News, he shares that he already felt Catholic “at heart” since 2017, when “this journey that took me about two, three years began.”

On December 8, 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, Jonathan received the sacrament of Baptism, officially becoming part of the Catholic Church.

Jonatan pointed out that it was necessary for him to receive the sacrament in the Church, considering that the one he had received in his Christian group may not have been totally valid.

The entire process that led to his conversion, continues the young man who is part of the Catholic Advanced Movement (MAC), began “paradoxically, with a stage of agnosticism (…) I was agnostic for a good few years of my life, I then tried to embrace a more reasonable faith, a faith based on evidence.”

Guided by different Christian leaders such as CS Lewis and the Catholic GK Chesterton, Jonatan Medina questioned his belonging to an evangelical church. “I began to embrace a more historical faith, with greater evidence. It was there that I said to myself, why am I Protestant? If Protestantism was born, evidently, in the 16th century. It is there that I began to investigate the history that I had already discovered since my conversion from agnosticism to Christianity.”

“Somehow, and without me realizing it, the Catholic Church had already appeared with its Tradition, with its beauty, and above all, with its unity. That was key.”

After “discovering all the fragmentations (…) of Protestantism, I say: how can the Gospel be so divided? And I see that the Church appears with its unity, although obviously that does not imply that there are no tensions or certain divisions, but there is a magisterium that helps us bond and gives us that guarantee of unity.”

The influence of the convert Scott Hahn, famous apologist for the United States

“I did a master’s degree in Theology at the University of Steubenville. I was with Professor Scott Hahn. I remember when I heard his testimony of conversion (…) He converted thanks to starting to pray the Rosary, because he was practically convinced of all the arguments, but he did not know what he was missing until someone gave him a Rosary,” Jonatan Medina said in the interview with EWTN.

“He prayed it, an impossible situation for him was solved and then he forgot about it. Then he realized that he had been ungrateful and began to pray it regularly and with that his conversion was consolidated,” he explained.

“Without a doubt the topic of Mary is always gravitating, because as a Protestant by birth I had never had affection for her,” he stressed.

Scott Hahn grew up in the Presbyterian Church in the United States, becoming a theologian and minister of that Christian denomination. His path of conversion began after becoming convinced, along with his wife Kimberly, that contraception is contrary to God’s law, a concept abandoned by many Protestants during the 20th century but always supported by the Catholic Church.

Hahn converted to Catholicism on Easter 1986. His wife followed four years later in 1990. They have six children and one of them, Jeremiah, has been a Catholic priest since 2021.

Jonatan also explains that another of the milestones in his conversion was having overcome the Protestant concept of Scripture alone (only by Scripture), which posits that the Bible is the only source for Christian faith and practice, ignoring Tradition, a source of revelation that is accepted by the Catholic Church.

“I had discovered the error of Scripture alone: “I remember when I discovered it and realized that evidence, that lack of clear logic,” he said, and he understood “that Scripture itself was also Tradition, only put in writing. There I said ‘hey, this makes sense to me.’ The Scripture alone “It started to fall.”

Jonatan Medina, also author of the short film Neighbors about the custodian or guardian angels, he is grateful for having come to love the Virgin Mary through the example of another convert, the Dr. Dante A Urbina, Catholic professor and lecturerauthor of several books such as Does God exist? y What is the true religion?

“He also worked at the university where I work and it was like (somewhat) providential that we (met) one day and I started asking him questions about Mary specifically, and he helped me a lot, and without a doubt I think that Mary has been key in my conversion,” he highlighted.

“And this topic about Mary is also very curious, because I finally got baptized, by the grace of God, on my birthday, which is December 8,” he concluded.